USA Dot Com is a blog covering politics and government from a conservative Christian perspective. Verne Strickland is a 50-year veteran of investigative journalism. This blog offers a take-no-prisoners style with a modicum of biting satire. Verne and his wife of 55 years, Durrene, live in Wilmington, NC.

Saturday, October 6, 2012

New Obama slogan has long ties to Marxism, socialism.

The
Obama campaign apparently didn't look backwards into history when
selecting its new campaign slogan, "Forward" — a word with a long and
rich association with European Marxism.

Many Communist and radical
publications and entities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries had
the name "Forward!" or its foreign cognates. Wikipedia has an entire
section called "Forward (generic name of socialist publications)."

"The
name Forward carries a special meaning in socialist political
terminology. It has been frequently used as a name for socialist,
communist and other left-wing newspapers and publications," the online
encyclopedia explains.

The slogan "Forward!" reflected the
conviction of European Marxists and radicals that their movements
reflected the march of history, which would move forward past capitalism
and into socialism and communism.

The Obama campaign released its
new campaign slogan Monday in a 7-minute video. The title card has
simply the word "Forward" with the "O" having the familiar Obama logo
from 2008. It will be played at rallies this weekend that mark the Obama
re-election campaign's official beginning.

There have been at
least two radical-left publications named "Vorwaerts" (the German word
for "Forward"). One was the daily newspaper of the Social Democratic
Party of Germany whose writers included Friedrich Engels and Leon
Trotsky. It still publishes as the organ of Germany's SDP, though that
party has changed considerably since World War II.

Another was the 1844
biweekly reader of the Communist League. Karl Marx, Engels and Mikhail
Bakunin are among the names associated with that publication.

East Germany named its Army soccer club ASK Vorwaerts Berlin (later FC Vorwaerts Frankfort).Vladimir
Lenin founded the publication "Vpered" (the Russian word for "forward")
in 1905. Soviet propaganda film-maker Dziga Vertov made a documentary
whose title is sometimes translated as "Forward, Soviet" (though also
and more literally as "Stride, Soviet").

Conservative critics of
the Obama administration have noted numerous ties to radicalism and
socialists throughout Mr. Obama's history, from his first political
campaign being launched from the living room of two former Weather
Underground members, to appointing as green jobs czar Van Jones, a
self-described communist.